


Fall into me

by zuzuzuuu



Series: Three's a crowd, but I like it lively [2]
Category: QCYN, UNINE (Band), 青春有你
Genre: Established Wenhan/JiaYi, I hope the chapter names make sense after all chapters are up, M/M, Multi, OT3, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rated for xhy's potty mouth, This is more wenhan/hanyu focused than I expected, UNINE guest appearances, an action au where no action happens, hanyu is a constipated lovefool and wenhan is just a fool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 18:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21342820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzuzuuu/pseuds/zuzuzuuu
Summary: It goes something like this:1. Li Wenhan and Jia Yi are a thing.2. Xia Hanyu seems to have developedsomethingfor both of them, which considering point 1, is messy and complicated. Xia Hanyu doesn't do complicated.3. He does, however, do messy.Pacific Rim AU.
Relationships: 157, Huang Jiaxin | Jia Yi/Xia Hanyu, Li Wenhan/Huang Jiaxin | Jia Yi, Li Wenhan/Huang Jiaxin | Jia Yi/Xia Hanyu, Li Wenhan/Xia Hanyu
Series: Three's a crowd, but I like it lively [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1381180
Kudos: 3





	Fall into me

Drifting with Jiaxin is easy. It’s like stepping into a pair of shoes he's worn all his life, snug and familiar. Wenhan does it so naturally that it’s breathing in one moment, and opening his eyes somewhere else the next.

Drifting with Xia Hanyu, however, is not.

“_Focus,_” he grits out, gripping the handles of the armrest so tightly that he thinks he might tear their leather covers. The warning sounds around them blare insistent and jarring, but he doesn’t have time for that.

“I’m _ trying, _” Xia Hanyu snaps. 

“Well try harder,” Wenhan shouts, or he thinks he shouts, but the jumping from thought to thought is making him confused as well. _ Fried rice - fight - alone - more further higher faster - fight - harder - Jia Yi - _

_ Jia Yi,_ Wenhan latches on, dragging the both of them to a stop. Everything slows, zooms in, and then he’s slipping into the scene like dipping underwater, all other thoughts sliding away. The boy in his - their? - memories turns, smile bubbling up like an orange soda, sticky sweet and vaguely vitamin flavoured. 

“What’s up?” Jiaxin asks. It’s a vivid sun-bathed memory, down to the animal-print plaster that Jiaxin has wrapped around his little finger. From where he grazed himself on the edge of the boxing equipment using his bare hands, no doubt.

The fondness in his chest surprises Wenhan, because it’s not his.

Xia Hanyu’s voice in the memory confirms it. “Are you and Wenhan -”

-

_ Drift connection interrupted,_ Wenhan hears when he blinks his eyes open. He struggles to sit up. “Are you and Wenhan what?”

“Fuck this,” Xia Hanyu mutters murderously. His headgear is already halfway across the room as he tears the restraints open, unbuckling himself with such speed that he nearly pulls the strap right off the chair. “I never should've -”

“Where are you going,” Wenhan demands, confused and angry and some unnamed ball of stinging unhappiness. “We’re not done.”

Xia Hanyu jerks to a stop. “No,” he says, voice unsteady. “We’re done.” 

He doesn’t spare Wenhan a single glance as he stalks his way out of the room, everyone parting like waves. Not even as Wenhan scrambles from his seat, uncaring of the curious stares of the technicians. “Xia Hanyu! Are you and Wenhan what? Hey! Xia Hanyu!”

-

Anybody in the Shatterdome could have told you that Li Wenhan and Jia Yi, the up-and-coming Jaeger co-pilots, are like twins separated at birth, best friends that were meant to be, a match made in heaven, two peas in a pod.

“Well, it’s a very big pod,” Wenhan says, licking at his soft serve.

Jiaxin nods, licking his own hand. “And a violent one, too!”

“That’s not what they mean by pod,” He Changxi says, unceremoniously taking over Jiaxini’s grape-flavour soda. “Though you two really are peas. Pea-brained, at least.”

“We haven’t met in the training room in a while, huh, Xixi,” Wenhan says in what he considers a dangerous tone. 

“Yeah, I miss wiping the floor with your face,” Changxi sighs, and dodges a not-as-light-as-you-might-think hit to the shoulder.

It’s Jiaxin who notices Xia Hanyu first, elbowing Wenhan as discreetly as he can. _ Over there, _ he points with his chin. They've been thinking about the mysterious oddball recently, the both of them, catching snatches of the other’s curiosity in the latest drift. And still somewhat in each other's heads, because Wenhan can _ feel _ Jiaxin pretending to be extremely interested in their shared ice cream while sneaking looks up from it. Wenhan asks Changxi, eyes never leaving the lone silhouette making its way to the lunch queue, “How’s your new training partner?”

“Hanyu?” Changxi says, attention on the meat he’s stealing off Wenhan’s plate. “He’s okay. He’s… not what I expected,” Changxi continues, nibbling thoughtfully on his chopsticks.

“Manners,” Wenhan says disapprovingly. 

“He’s the intuitive type,” Changxi ignores Wenhan as if he didn’t hear the interruption. Jiaxin steals the meat from Changxi again and puts it back on Wenhan’s plate. “Kind of like you, now that I think about it. But much cuter; you’re not cute at all.”

“He Wei,” Wenhan smiles cheerfully, “Time to get destroyed.”

-

_ Cute? _Wenhan thinks now, slumped in his chair. That disaster of a drift test this morning was anything but. Why would Changxi say that?

Perhaps it’s because Xia Hanyu lives more in the stories he hears from the people around him, than in his own daily life. Mingming imitating Lao Xia asking for grilled pork on Meatless Monday - and the resulting face of alarm of the cafeteria staff. Guan Yue mentioning off-hand about Xiao Xia coming round to return the shampoo he borrowed. Yangyang telling him about a funny video that Hanyu shared with him yesterday. 

But Wenhan's impression of Xia Hanyu seems to be stuck in that first time they met in the training room. Or rather, the first time Wenhan saw him, lying flat down by himself along the side of the room, away from everyone else. 

“Xia Hanyu,” the instructor had called, and the person hugging his staff in his sleep sat up. Wenhan remembers wondering if such a passive person would be able to do much fighting.

Xia Hanyu had easily proven him wrong.

The skinny-looking trainee wasn’t the fastest, wasn’t the strongest. But he saw the flow, and he took it. With every resounding crack of the clashing staffs, Wenhan leaned a bit further forward in his seat. You can train stamina, but you can’t train the hunger to win. 

And those eyes as Xia Hanyu stood, end of his staff at his opponent’s neck on the floor - they were ravenous.

_ But not cute, _ Wenhan thinks, still unreasonably upset. 

“What are you thinking?” Jiaxin asks in the present, placing a hand over the fingers that Wenhan is biting.

Wenhan stares down at him. The cast for Jia Yi’s broken arm sticks out like an eyesore, everyone’s well-wishes scribbled all over. Including one from a flowing, easy _ Xia Hanyu, _ funny-looking dog face beside it.

“Are you and Wenhan,” Wenhan says, looking straight into Huang Jiaxin’s eyes. 

Eyes that he has never known to lie to him, which lock on immediately. Is it a blessing or a curse? Wenhan wonders, reading the recognition in Jia Yi’s shifted gaze. How deeply they understand each other, and yet as it turns out - not all that deeply after all.

“It didn’t go well?” Jia Yi says, head down, picking at the seams of his favourite sweater. Already falling apart as it is, it's not a sustainable source of distraction from uncomfortable conversations. “Today’s drift test.”

“Drifting requires trust,” Wenhan quotes the fundamental axiom they all know by heart, which is the third-most obvious statement. The second-most obvious being _ you knew this would happen, _ and greatest of them all, _ there’s something you’re not telling me. _But there’s no use trying to make Jiaxin talk now, because he’s as stubborn as a mule when he makes his mind up. “We couldn’t - Xia Hanyu doesn’t trust me, though I have no clue why.”

Jiaxin side-eyes him. “I do _ too _trust Xia Hanyu,” Wenhan says crossly, helping him sit up. “Stop giving me that look.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Jiaxin blinks innocently, one arm outstretched. “Come on,” he says, eyebrow raised. “It's Pilot-Bonding-o-clock. Just don't squash my broken arm.”

There is no set time for their pilot-bonding-o-clock, but then again there is no set time for a Jaeger pilot to break his own damn arm falling off the bed either. Wenhan huffs at the insinuation that he would intentionally cause more pain to his co-pilot, but the tiny jab does make him lose a bit of the steam he'd built up. “That is such a lame name,” he says, arms already around Jiaxin’s back. 

“You came up with it,” Jiaxin says into Wenhan's shirt. 

“No way, I have better taste than that,” Wenhan says, heartbeat syncing up to the one against his chest. 

Jiaxin hums. Then, “So you trust Xia Hanyu? Someone you've never even properly talked to?”

“I - Don’t twist my words!”

“But you said - hey hahaha that tickles! Just because my arm is broken -”

Neither of them hear the knock on the door until it's too late. 

“Jia - Sorry,” Xia Hanyu says stiffly, hand on the door handle. “I’ll come back later.”

Wenhan whips his head up from where it had been buried in Jiaxin’s shoulder. “Xia Hanyu! Wait!” 

But the other person has already turned away, walking off at a pace not unlike the aftermath of their morning. “Xia - _ ugh, _ ” Wenhan growls, untangling himself from the mess of his and Jiaxin’s limbs. “He never _ listens. _”

“Look who's talking,” Jiaxin laughs. A very inappropriate time to be laughing, as Wenhan hurriedly straightens Jiaxin’s rumpled tee. “Go,” Jiaxin urges, pushing his hands away. “How are you going to drift with someone without talking to him?”

Even so, Wenhan hesitates at the door, glancing backward. “Trust me,” Jiaxin says. Wenhan nods and runs.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote 3k of pac rim 157 and decided I didn't like it. So the solution, obviously, was to write another 3k.
> 
> By which I mean I have about 6.2k of pac rim 157 on my hands and I'm still not satisfied with it (and it's definitely not done yet), but let's hope we solve that in 4 chapters!
> 
> As always, I appreciate comments!


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